


And the Ancient of Days

by ThatPawnbrokersShopAroundTheCorner



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Drabble Sequence, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Murder Husbands, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Slow Burn, Wordcount: 666
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-12
Updated: 2015-10-22
Packaged: 2018-04-20 08:16:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 5,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4780274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatPawnbrokersShopAroundTheCorner/pseuds/ThatPawnbrokersShopAroundTheCorner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can withstand it?” [Rev 6:17] The ending chosen for Will was to fall into the ocean in Hannibal's arms, and emerge as though he'd been baptized.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 001

**Author's Note:**

> Weekly (to the best of my ability) drabbles all set post-3x13, each exactly 666 words long. Spoilers for 3x13 and possibly the series as a whole abound.
> 
> Also found on [tumblr](http://themongoosedance.tumblr.com/tagged/666words).

\---

And water moves into the bluff like a waltz: pull, push, crash.

\---

When Hannibal hits the water, he thinks of Schrödinger’s Cat: that infamous thought experiment, where a creature is both alive and dead in a box until someone on the outside opens the lid. And even then, that agent is wholly responsible for the cat’s fate: death or resurrection, equally permanent outcomes, completely dependent on an outside force.

The parallels are trivial to grasp, but imperfect. Will has to peer into the box in order to kill him, or bring him salvation. Yet Hannibal isn’t sure, at this point, if Will is even going to survive.

Perhaps it is telling, then, that he hooks one arm around Will’s waist the moment he realizes what is happening. The other comes up to lay a hand on Will’s head, securing it against his shoulder. Hannibal tries to twist his body so that when the impact comes, it will not be Will who takes most of the punishment.

He has no idea if this will be enough. He hopes it is.

But certainty is a different beast altogether, elusive and fickle. Certainty can evaporate with a single look, a touch, a quirk of lips that is not quite a smile but gives birth to the words _’It’s beautiful’_. Hannibal doesn’t know if Will planned this _(‘she kissed me, then she pushed me off a train’)_ or not _('maybe I can’t save myself, maybe that’s just fine’)_. He doesn’t know if they might both survive, by some miracle, only for Will to stab him in the back without blinking an eye.

The greatest tragedy, perhaps, is this: Hannibal isn’t sure if he would even care. Will killed with him, embraced him, called what he did and what they shared and therefore Hannibal himself 'beautiful’.

Maybe this, as well, is just fine.

\---

When Will hits the water, he thinks of Abigail.

Other thoughts flood his mind, of course, in that split second between free fall and the frigid kiss of the sea. He thinks of murder, and intimacy, and how wine picked up as an afterthought four years ago tastes of finality. The Dragon is dead, and very soon, he and Hannibal may follow.

But mostly, he thinks of Abigail, how he never really got to go fishing with her. It’s such a ridiculous thing to fixate on, maybe, but it takes up most of the real estate in the forefront of his mind, because the water is right there. He never got to go fishing with her. That’s a shame.

What he ignores and pushes into the abyss of his mind, or at least tries to: Hannibal’s warmth, and how the tightening of his arm around Will’s waist stirred up feelings of security, and something else he doesn’t dare attach words to. He ignores the memory of that embrace, and how he finally, finally got Hannibal to lower his guard.

He won.

He owed it to Abigail, to Jack and Alana, and Beverly – everyone the Ripper slaughtered, and everyone else who was poisoned by the bloodshed. One last-ditch attempt to remain on the side of the righteous, he tells himself: if he survives this, if they _both_ survive this, then he’ll understand. He’ll stop fighting. Either way, he already won.

But his victory doesn’t taste sweet; it tastes like copper in his mouth, nothing more. If he’s hurtling into the ocean in Hannibal’s arms, then it’s still a zero-sum game.

At the very end, in spite of his best efforts, he recalls Hannibal glancing at his lips, and thinks of something that would have tasted better.

\---

And water moves into the bluff like a waltz: pull, push, crash. And again.

Green eyes are slowly coaxed open by the light of the sun. They can’t see the top of the cliff from here.

“Hello, Will.”

Maybe, on some level, he knew it was going to turn out like this. Maybe that means he wanted it to.

“Hello, Hannibal.”

Didn’t he?


	2. 002

\---

Will doesn’t feel the needle slipping in and out of his skin. Come to think of it, he can’t feel anything from the right side of his face at all. He should probably be grateful for that.

“No streams for you to retreat to in the open ocean.” Hannibal’s voice cuts into his thoughts with the same piercing sharpness as the scissors he uses to sever the excess length of suture. Will has no idea where all of this medical equipment came from, but he isn’t sure he wants to know. “Tell me what’s on your mind." 

Will trails his eyes down. "How’s your liver?”

“He missed it by this much.” Hannibal marks out a tiny gap in the air with the thumb and forefinger of his free hand. “Unless you are asking about the condition of the meat, and were planning something relevant.”

“I wasn’t.” Will swallows, tasting salt and copper. “Planning.”

“Pity. To be honored by you would have been nothing short of poetic.”

Will lets those words hang suspended in his mind before letting them sink, slowly, and take root. He stares at the water, almost green in this light, curling and crashing into sprays of white. He thinks of how rock erodes, without keeping any tracks. 

“You didn’t fight back." 

"No,” Hannibal agrees. 

“You don’t seem bothered by that. Considering the outcome.”

Hannibal offers him half of a smile. “I would be lying if I didn’t say I would have preferred other means – or, at the very least, some semblance of a warning. But the outcome has been nothing but pleasing to me. And I look forward to only grander things from here.”

Will stares at the spot on Hannibal’s torso where he swears he can remember a bullet passed through. He can’t tell if there’s a bandage underneath the crusted blood and wine on Hannibal’s shirt, but he’s not about to ask him to lift it up so he can see. “How can you be sure?”

“Because of the Arrow of Time.” Hannibal’s quasi-smile turns rueful, but there’s a glitter in his eye as he catches Will’s gaze. “One of a mere handful of certainties in our universe, which I once regarded with regret but now have come to embrace." 

This game again. Will is never going to win it, he knows; he’s not even sure he’s in any condition to play right now. But there isn’t much else to do, with only water and cliff and sky, and Hannibal, for miles. "What about everything you said before, about the teacup coming back together?" 

"I would remind you of what you said about the teacup being broken. ‘Not going to gather itself together again.’”

Will pretends he didn’t notice the deliberately flatter vowels, the slight dance in Hannibal’s eyebrows when he threw his own words back at him. “Entropy paves a one-way road,” he murmurs.

“Many things do. One can observe, for instance, that when faced with the right conditions he can only go from a higher to a lower potential.”

Will isn’t sure why he wants to laugh at that. “You didn’t fight back,” he reminds him again.

“And you can’t stuff a butterfly back into its chrysalis, once it has emerged.”

A wave breaks over a section of rock that is uncomfortably close, drenching Will’s legs with seawater. He curls his knees to his chest and locks his arms around them, watching the ocean, and feeling his eyes burn. 

“I can’t… promise,” he finally stammers, “that I’ll have your appetite. I don’t know. I won’t say 'never’, because otherwise we wouldn’t be here. But… I don’t know.”

“Then we take small, infinitesimal steps.” Hannibal traces the wound on Will’s face with his finger, gingerly. “Each seemingly reversible along the Arrow of Time. But when laid out end to end, you will see how far you’ve come.”

When Will finally nods, Hannibal pulls him closer, resting Will’s head on his shoulder, and Will doesn’t pull away. 

“You will be magnificent.”


	3. 003

\---

He's lost count of how many times he found himself wandering the halls of Hannibal's mind palace. So he probably shouldn't be surprised to see Hannibal in his stream, standing against the current, waiting for him.

Will starts forward. The water, up to his thighs and rising steadily, impedes him. His heels dig into silt, and it's a struggle to stand.

There's a heat in the air, and a frenzied crackling. The trees and shrubbery on both banks are engulfed in flame, and he realizes he has nowhere to go.

"Are you happy now?" He has to shout to be heard over the roar of the fire.

"Such a question implies, necessarily, that I was unhappy before."

Will doesn't know what to make of that, but every response he can think of is a slippery slope to treacherous territory. He glances up, feeling sweat bead on his temples and the back of his neck. A dull ache in his chest forces out the words: "We can't stay here."

"No, we can't." Unlike Will, Hannibal moves through the water with ease, and is soon standing beside him. He wraps an arm around Will's shoulder, and Will lets him.

He looks down though, before Hannibal can arrest his gaze. He notices that despite the fire, the water of his stream looks black in the moonlight.

\---

The sun sears into his eyes when they snap open, but what he feels keenly is the fire burning beneath his skin. He groans. A needle slides into the muscle just below his shoulder. A plunger is depressed, and a strangled hiss escapes his lips.

It takes a second to meet Hannibal's eyes.

It takes five to finally, truly wake up, and from then another half or so to _snap_ : he pushes himself up and grabs Hannibal by the shoulders, before slamming him against the rock behind him. A sharp, white-hot flash of pain erupts from his shoulder at the sudden movement, but he doesn't care. "Don't!"

"Will -- "

"No! Not this again! I don't -- !"

" _Will_."

The second time, Hannibal speaks his name with a harsh gravity that drags him into the earth. Hannibal uncurls the fingers of his other hand, revealing a small bottle which he raises to Will's eye level, showing him the label.

"Our shy boy unfortunately didn't extend to you the courtesy of sterilizing his blade before his visit." He exhales sharply through his nose, and Will isn't sure if it's out of amusement, or exertion. Or pain. "So here is your pound of cure."

Will pulls back. "I-I'm sorry," he stammers, rubbing at his burning forehead. "I thought..."

Hannibal continues inspecting his injuries as he trails off. "It's alright, Will." But he puts the syringe away. "For what it's worth, to me at least, we've moved past the point of mutual mistrust and drug-induced dancing. I hope you feel the same."

Will lets out a shaky sigh. When Hannibal turns his attention to the wound on his face, he finds himself leaning into the touch. "The Great Red Dragon managed to change us after all?"

"Of course. And we should rejoice." With his other hand, Hannibal traces the long-healed horizontal scar on Will's forehead. "Equilibrium is death."

\---

Just as the sun begins to set, Chiyoh shows up on a speedboat. Because of course she does.

"Do they know?" Hannibal asks her.

"Not yet." She ignores Will completely as she retrieves items from the boat: bottled water, hardtack, more medical supplies. "I left a trail of breadcrumbs to lead them away. But Jack Crawford is not a stupid man."

"Then we no longer have the luxury of waiting to heal some more before moving." The lines on Hannibal's face sketch an apology as he turns to Will. "We will have to leave tonight."

"Where are we going?"

They exchange glances. When Hannibal replies, Will can't help but notice that his smile looks familiar; it's the same as the one he wore when he surrendered to Jack in the snow.

"Home."


	4. 004

\---

Will doesn't think he's ever walked this far, or for so long, in his entire life. In reality, he knows, it was probably only a few miles at most. Time is relative, and to a feverish, wounded traveler the dilation factor becomes astronomical.

Or something like that. Those words tumbled effortlessly out of Hannibal's mouth some hour or two (or six) ago, and Will recalls nodding dumbly, pretending he understood.

"Wait here," Chiyoh tells them when they finally find themselves on the side of a long road. By this time they've lost sight of the sea, and the scraggly rock and sparse pittances of greenery have given way to more even, softer ground. "I won't be long."

Will waits for her to disappear from his view, and stares at that same spot of empty road when she's gone. "If you were to push her off some significant height," he murmurs absently, "then the three of us would have achieved some kind of symmetry."

"Do you want me to? Should the opportunity arise?"

"No," Will's answer is immediate, honest. "I don't want you to hurt her."

"Very benevolent. She did shoot you, if you'll recall."

"So did Jack."

Hannibal hums in thought. "I could tell you a story about Uncle Jack and a second-story window. Entrails were involved."

"I'll pass." His growing headache aside, Will doesn't quite want to think about Jack right now. "Either way, if it's all the same to you, I'd rather you not harm our current source of rescue and transportation."

"Less benevolence, more practicality, then?"

"She didn't play." He remembers the prisoner in the cell of Hannibal's childhood home, and feels something ugly stirring in his gut. There's nothing to hide behind when a strong, frigid breeze blows, and Will wraps his arms around himself, suppressing a shiver. "Not as enthusiastically as some other parties did."

"Such is your barometer for what separates humanity from swine, it seems." Hannibal's voice is suddenly closer behind him than it was before, and Will's spine uncurls as Hannibal drapes his jacket over his shoulders. Large hands trail down Will's arms, to his elbows, before they withdraw. "An interesting metric. One that must be calibrated in light of certain events."

"Maybe." Will pulls the jacket tighter around himself before threading his arms through the sleeves. When he turns up the collar, he picks up on a familiar scent he's come to associate with rare books and crackling fires, and promises made with the blade of a knife. Which is just as well, because the rest of it smells like blood.

"Though I would never dream of it, Chiyoh could survive the worst, I'm sure." Hannibal sounds oddly proud when he says this, but Will is not sure of whom.

\---

Chiyoh comes back for them in a weathered gray sedan with a dent on the driver's door and Illinois plates. Hannibal takes the passenger's seat without asking, which leaves Will to share the backseat with a blanket, a first aid kit, and a familiar-looking rifle.

A map is unfurled onto the dashboard. Hannibal points to a spot while murmuring something Will doesn't quite hear.

What he does catch is the slight furrow of Chiyoh's eyebrows. "Are you sure that is the safest choice?"

"No," Hannibal admits as he folds up the map. "But it is certainly safer than staying here."

Will thinks about that as they drive away. The road turns bumpy after the first hour, and he trains his gaze along the horizon to keep his stomach settled; by the second hour, there is nothing else to look at anyway. _Equilibrium is death_.

\---

By the fourth hour, Hannibal trades places with Chiyoh. His eyes meet Will's through the rear-view mirror, and it would be easy -- _so_ easy, to snatch the rifle and take control of the car, to drive back to Jack and to justice, leaving all of this behind.

But he doesn't. Instead he rests his head against the window, and watches the sky darken.


	5. 005

\---

Twilight finds them on a desolate stretch of highway cutting through forest and dust. Chiyoh fetches a triangle reflector kit from the trunk, and pops open the hood.

Authenticity is important, Hannibal thinks as he steps over the guard rail, leading them into the forest.

Dinner is more hardtack, bottled water, and a wild bird Chiyoh shoots down some time before it becomes oppressively dark. It's Will who ends up watching the bird roast, and he's also the one who builds the fire, out of twigs and brush, and a cigarette lighter Hannibal found in the glove compartment.

"By this time tomorrow, we should have access to running water," Hannibal says while they bury the bones by hand. "Difficult to promise anything else. We have to imagine that Jack and the FBI have found the body by now, and are searching the area with a fine-toothed comb. We will have to make do."

"You still haven't told me where we're going," Will presses.

"I would prefer not to tell you until we're almost there. It would be tragic to set expectations only to have them dashed by circumstance."

Will throws him a look that says he doesn't buy it. When Hannibal merely smiles in response, Will tries to glower his way to an answer from Chiyoh, but she ignores him as she cleans her gun.

\---

They decide to sleep in shifts that night, Hannibal offering to take first watch. Will, in an almost endearing act of predictability, says he wants to take the last.

So Hannibal isn't surprised when he gently shakes Will awake after two hours, his hand clasped over his good shoulder, and is greeted with a scowl. "I thought -- "

"That you could use Chiyoh as a buffer between us?" Hannibal takes a seat on the ground beside him. "Clever boy. But a gentleman would let her have her rest, wouldn't you agree?"

Begrudgingly, Will emerges from the cocoon of the thick blanket wrapped around him. He glances up, and Hannibal follows his gaze.

The skies have remained mercifully clear, and with no pollution from the city lights to compete against, the stars overhead glitter with their brightness unimpeded.

"Reminds me of when I was at sea," Will murmurs, a sedate reverence in his voice. "I looked up at the night sky there -- Orion above the horizon, and near it, Jupiter." He swallows. "I wondered if you could see it too... if our stars were the same."

"I believe some of our stars will always be the same. You entered the foyer of my mind, and stumbled down the hall of my beginnings."

And it should not be so easy, for mere words to purchase wonder, but they do. Will stares at him much like how he did when Hannibal once backed him against the ladder in his office, but there's a hint of something else on his face, a _je ne sais quoi_ that is only heightened by his scars, the tightness of his jaw. His eyes glow against the firelight, and Hannibal forgets all about the stars.

He remembers the moment they slew the Dragon, together. He relishes the memory and waits for a beat. Another.

He leans forward.

"W-wait!" A rush of air through parted lips, a rustle of leaves as Will scrambles to his feet, and the spell is broken. "Wait. I'm... sorry." Will looks as though he is betraying the world when he sighs. "I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize, Will." Hannibal chuckles, and begins tucking himself into the blanket Will had left behind. "I understand. We have all the time in the world."

He pretends not to notice that Will lingers above him, awkwardly shifting his weight, before mumbling something about 'checking on the car'. And he hides a smile in the crook of his arm, because Will asked him to 'wait' -- not to 'stop'.

Patience, Hannibal reminds himself as he closes his eyes, will grant him victory. He's already waited three years. He can wait a little bit longer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The lines about 'our stars being the same' are taken from the books, and from a part of the script for 3x06 Dolce that (tragically) never made it to the episode itself.


	6. 006

\---

They say goodbye to Chiyoh at high noon.

They park the car at a train station that almost straddles the state border. By this time they've managed to procure a proper bandage for Will's face, and nobody's wearing anything drenched in blood anymore. Lunch, a greasy spread at a nearby diner, goes down quickly for different reasons: Hannibal picks out the quarter of his plate that he can stomach, while Will scarfs his down like a starving bush hog .

They walk her to the platform with one minute left to final boarding call. The train will stop at a dozen different cities, and Will isn't sure how to ask her where she'll go. Nor is he sure if she would even tell him, if he did.

"Remind you of something?" she asks.

Will stares at a train window. "Gravity and pain. Seems to be my lot more often than it should be."

"Not all of it self-inflicted," Hannibal chimes in.

"You nearly got me killed once. I did the same to you, twice, but I also saved you." Chiyoh cracks the barest approximation of a smile. "We are even."

Will blinks. "I wasn't aware either of us was supposed to be keeping score."

"There are some who believe that the universe itself keeps score," Hannibal murmurs. "Each of our actions a ripple in the fabric of timespace. Interference -- constructive or destructive -- impossible to quantify. A butterfly beats its wings and starts a tempest halfway around the world."

"Is that where you both will be?" Chiyoh asks. "Halfway around the world -- back to where it all began?"

"No and yes."

Will can't pretend not to have noticed the slight pause before Hannibal replied, but the other man won't meet his eyes. Instead he smiles as Chiyoh turns one last time, after having climbed aboard the train. What starts with a dip of the head turns into a bow, at the waist. Chiyoh's eyes glitter when she beams and returns the gesture.

"Iron and silver," are Hannibal's last words to her before the train drowns out all other sounds. Will doesn't know what he means by that, but this time, he's content not to wonder.

\---

They resume their driving -- or rather Hannibal does, taking them back onto the highway before Chiyoh's train is even fully out of sight. Will moves to the passenger's seat; he thinks that Hannibal might think it rude if he stays in the back.

They don't speak during the first hour of their drive. A few minutes in, Will pokes through the CDs in the glove compartment: country music, mostly, and a couple of religious audiobooks. He doesn't want to try the radio.

"Are we going to stew in polite silence until the end of our trip?"

"I don't know. Tell me how much longer until the end of our trip first."

Hannibal smiles. "I'm certain you could deduce it if you were to try. There are only so many places we can reach given our current mode of transportation."

Will yawns, feels the slight sting and burn in his cheek as his jaw unhinges. "We could drive onto a ferry."

"I'll provide you with a boundary condition to simplify the problem. No ferry."

It's too bad, he almost says. Despite everything, a part of him might have liked to see open water again. "That still takes us to anywhere between here and Chile." Another yawn. "Or Argentina."

Hannibal tilts his head, as though he never considered it. "Perhaps in another life." The car slows as they near a construction zone. "Rest, Will. I told you, you worry too much."

\---

He drifts off, and at some point, he dreams that it's night-time, and they're going 30 above the speed limit on an empty stretch of road, and Jack Crawford is standing up ahead, waving his arms, ordering them to stop.

He dreams that they don't. There's a loud, sickening thud, a jolt.

But when he whirls around to look, he sees nothing but pavement.


	7. 007

\---

Will slips in and out throughout the trip, partly due to some last remnants of fever, and partly due to the sheer heat that feels mostly the same. The car's air-conditioning is temperamental. Hannibal assures him they won't be long.

At some point he realizes that he's been left in an idling car, at a rest stop. He finds Hannibal talking on a payphone nearby, and thinks how utterly careless he's being -- or maybe not, as Will stares at the key still in the ignition, and feels no overwhelming urge to do anything but go back to sleep.

He wakes again when he hears the engine die. Remembering what Hannibal said about smell being tethered to memory, he breathes in deep, and the rush of air brings with it a deluge that dances in the darkness behind his eyelids: grass and gravel and corrugated metal roofs, quaint little houses in pastel with paint curling off the walls. He imagines the brown of the swamp, and the deep red of the bricks of the church against a bright Sunday summer sky. Smoke on the bayou.

"You bastard," Will breathes before he can stop himself. But he's also fighting back something that feels like a smile. "We could have gone anywhere else."

"I promised I would take you home. And I always keep my promises." Hannibal actually opens the passenger door for him, like a perfect gentleman but for the cheeky grin on his face. "Welcome home, Will."

\---

The house is a far cry from Hannibal's old Baltimore abode: a simple bungalow with a weathered porch and mismatched furniture, cracked tile in the bathroom and a roof that's seen better days. There's a note waiting for them on the dining table, from the caretaker who made himself scarce before their arrival: 'Dryer is busted. Call xxx-xxxx.'

It's in an interesting place, a few towns over from where he grew up, and a couple of hours from New Orleans -- close enough to remind him of home, but far away enough to dissuade any ill-conceived pilgrimages.

"When I bought this property, one of my conditions was to have the previous owners install crown molding in the kitchen." There's a pleased look on Hannibal's face as he assesses the work that was done.

"When was that, exactly?"

"Three years ago, and change."

Will presses him for specifics, and does the math when Hannibal gives them up. "I was in prison then," he realizes.

"Yes."

"Am I going to have to ask, or are you going to tell me?"

Hannibal pauses in the middle of checking the cupboards, and tilts his head as though in thought. "Are you familiar with Pascal's Wager, Will?"

He is, as luck would have it. "Believing in God because it's the more practical choice," he mumbles. He recalls that a time came when it was the only thing that drove him to drag himself out of bed every Sunday morning to follow his father to church. "You found it in your best interest to believe that I'd eventually go with you, and made arrangements accordingly."

"Better that and be disappointed, than the reverse and be caught unprepared." Hannibal nods and glances up at the ceiling, at the cobwebs strung across the corners and flecks of white from the previous owners' clumsy attempt at painting. "I thought that eventually, you and I could spend our days here. After Abigail started her own family."

...And what is he supposed to say to that? "Going to take a shower," Will mutters. He exits the kitchen before those words can latch on, make him remember, make him feel.

\---

There's no hot water in the bathroom. Will's teeth chatter the whole eight minutes he's under the shower, but he survives. He washes everything from the neck down, and spends the next 20 minutes standing in front of the mirror.

Briefly, he considers peeling back the bandage on his face.

At the last second, he decides against it. One day at a time.


	8. 008

\---

They spend the rest of that first week recovering, and settling into the house. They rest when they can and work when they can't, but neither of them leaves. The caretaker left them with enough food in the pantry to last until the end of the month. Will doubts that they won't get restless before then.

By sunset, the woods behind the house swell with the drone of 13-year cicadas. On the third day, Will finds a stash of whiskey hidden in a chest in the den. He takes one of the bottles out to the porch and spends the evening drinking, waiting for the sound of engines and tires that never comes.

\---

The sun doesn't really come up on Sunday. The morning starts off heavy and gray, and by noon the downpour begins. Rain assaults the window panes, soaks the trees and the road outside. Will takes a quick walk around the house and spots three places where the roof is leaking.

It's still raining when Hannibal inspects the wound on his face. Will shuts his eyes as the bandage is peeled back. He feels it, cold and sticky, and catches a whiff of copper. It doesn't hurt, but he thinks maybe it's supposed to.

"Do you remember what I told you, as I cleaned your wounds the night you killed Randall Tier?"

Will swallows. "'Don't go inside.'"

"Yes. I hate to repeat myself, but I'm afraid I will have to make the same entreaty unto you today."

"There's no 'inside' anymore. There's only here, and everywhere." _And you're everywhere_ , he doesn't add; Hannibal casts long shadows in all the rooms of his mind palace, even in the absence of light. There are no more forts left to man.

"We create abstractions in time and space to protect ourselves. It is the only way we know how to navigate the universe." Hannibal speaks softly, his voice low and more air than tone, like the rush of rain outside. He dabs a cotton ball soaked in something yellow at Will's cheek. "Does that hurt?"

Will shakes his head. "Not anymore."

Hannibal continues in silence, cleaning the skin around the wound, his breath soundless and cool against Will's face. He shuts his eyes when Hannibal reaches for a pair of surgical scissors -- which is probably not the best idea, as he ends up tensing when the cold metal is pressed against his cheek.

"Try to hold still for me, please." One hand clasps the back of Will's neck as Hannibal begins slow, meticulous work on the stitches.

The scissor blades work like something he could dance to. Snip, snip, snip.

When he's finished, Hannibal steers Will towards the bathroom mirror, and clasps his shoulders before he can remember to protest. "Look."

Without the stitches, all that remains is dark red, the memory of a knife that cut open a Dragon. He knows it will lighten and fade in time, turning into another scar. But it's hard to see it right now -- hard to tell what's going to be permanent. "He really didn't hold back," Will murmurs.

"And you survived." Gently, very gently, Hannibal traces the path of the wound with his index finger, his eyes never leaving Will's through the mirror. His other hand releases Will's shoulder to slide down his arm, grasping at the hem of his shirt and pulling it up to expose the scar on his stomach. He traces this one too, much more fondly this time, his preference for his own handiwork evident. "You have always survived. Remarkable boy."

Will sucks in his breath. He finds himself leaning back, resting his head against Hannibal's shoulder. He feels... safe, here. He can no longer remember when he last felt this way, and whether it was before Molly or before Jack.

What a strange thing that is.

Then there's a beeping in the kitchen, an infuriating sound. "Dinner beckons." Hannibal reluctantly lets go, but presses a chaste kiss against Will's temple -- and Will lets him.


End file.
